Next Goal Wins

Last night I went to see Next Goal Wins because I simply cannot resist an inspirational sports movie and I enjoyed seeing this true story (told with a few wild embellishments according to a priest, played rather amusingly by director Taika Waititi, who breaks the fourth wall to narrate) with a large crowd who frequently laughed out loud.  Thomas Rongen (Michael Fassbender) is coerced into to coaching the football team in American Samoa, notorious for losing by the widest margin (31-0) ever during a game against Australia, after being fired from the U.S. men's national team.  The organizer of the team (Oscar Kightley) just wants them to score one goal, which they have never done in international play, but Rongen is a volatile alcoholic with anger management issues and immediately butts heads with the devoutly religious, traditional, and laid back players.  The team eventually finds success but they also teach Rongen that there are more important things than winning.  This is full of the usual sports movie tropes, such as a training montage to "Everybody Wants to Rule the World," a motivational locker room speech, as well as a suspenseful come from behind win, and it definitely includes a white savior narrative (although it is somewhat subverted by the fact that the team wins in spite of Rongen).  Fassbender's performance is surprisingly bad and I actually cared about the individual members of the team (especially a transgender player, the first to ever compete in a FIFA qualifying match, brilliantly portrayed by Kaimana) more than Rongen and I wish that their character arcs had been emphasized more.  Despite all of this, however, there is enough heart and humor (I loved all of the references to The Karate Kid) to make this an entertaining watch and I recommend it, especially to fans of the genre, although it is definitely one you can wait to see when it streams.

Brahms' Symphony No. 2

Last night I was back at Abravanel Hall for another Utah Symphony concert and it was wonderful.  The orchestra began with a modern piece called Prelude a une nuit americaine by Mathilde Wantenaar.  It is meant to represent a sultry evening with just the hint of jazz in the air and I really enjoyed the energy and vitality, especially the tension created by the themes played by the brass.  Next came Death and Transfiguration by Richard Strauss and this was my favorite piece of the evening because I could definitely envision a dying man searching for what lies beyond just by closing my eyes and listening to the music.  It begins very slowly with beautiful themes played by the woodwinds and a solo violin to represent dreams once cherished during a lifetime.  Then there is a dramatic change in tone with a crash of timpani and fanfares from the brass leading to some intense passages from the violins to depict the reality of the human condition.  The piece concludes with the stroke of a gong signifying the transcendence needed to achieve the greatness once dreamed of.  The performance was incredibly powerful!  After the intermission, the orchestra concluded with Symphony No. 2 by Johannes Brahms.  Guest conductor Markus Poschner, a world-renowned expert on Brahms, explained that this piece celebrates both the joy of living and the melancholy that exists below the surface.  I was really struck by the notes played by the cellos and basses at the beginning of the first movement which eventually develop into themes by the horns, the woodwinds, and then the violins with underlying hints from the trombones and tuba threatening the calm.  The melancholy themes, which I loved, come from the cellos in the second movement while the oboes play a lighthearted theme recalling the first movement in the third.  The final movement ends triumphantly with the trombones!  What I most enjoyed about this concert is that, like the one two weeks ago, the three pieces were tied together thematically through their exploration of the highs and lows of the human experience.  I highly recommend getting a ticket to tonight's performance of the same program (go here).

My Fair Lady at the Eccles

I'm a big fan of the musical My Fair Lady (there is just something comforting about all of the old favorites from Broadway's Golden Era) so I have been looking forward to the Lincoln Center production currently touring ever since the 2023-2024 Broadway at the Eccles season was announced!  I was able to see it last night and, unfortunately, I was a little bit underwhelmed by it.  When Professor Henry Higgins (Jonathan Grunert) and Colonel Pickering (John Adkison) encounter a Cockney flower girl named Eliza Doolittle (Annette Barrios-Torres) in Covent Garden, Higgins boasts that he could pass her off as a duchess at the Embassy Ball within six months by teaching her to speak properly.  Even though Eliza is a success at the ball, she becomes a true lady when she compels Higgins to treat her like one.  While I love all of the music in this show and wait with great anticipation for all of my favorite songs, including "Wouldn't It Be Loverly," With a Little Bit of Luck," "Just You Wait," "The Rain in Spain," "I Could Have Danced All Night," "On the Street Where You Live," "Get Me to the Church on Time," and "I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face," I found the performances to lack energy despite the fact that everyone in the cast has a beautiful voice (especially Borrios-Torres).  The big production numbers, "With a Little Bit of Luck" and "Get Me to the Church on Time," are the best scenes in the show thanks to Michael Hegarty's comedic turn as Alfred P. Doolittle (and some cross-dressing can-can dancers) but every other number has surprisingly unimaginative choreography and nothing really grabbed my attention.  I especially found the ball scene to be oddly anticlimactic because it features couples dancing without much opportunity for Eliza to practice her correct diction with Professor Zoltan Karpathy (Christopher Isolando).  The costumes at Ascot are usually a highlight of the show for me but the ones in this scene are muted pastels rather than the dramatic black and white ones that you usually see (they are admittedly very beautiful, especially the hats, but they do not have a lot of impact).  I did, however, love the jewel-toned gowns, particularly Eliza's golden one, at the ball and both Higgins and Pickering have some opulent dressing gowns and smoking jackets.  The other aspect of the production that really impressed me was the set, especially the opera house in Covent Garden, Henry Higgins' wood paneled study (I loved the spiral staircase connecting the two levels and the large arched window), and the Embassy ballroom (the lighting in this scene is gorgeous).  I will always love this show and this version is "loverly" enough for me to recommend it but, honestly, I have seen much better local productions (especially this one) with tickets at half the price.  It runs at the Eccles Theatre through November 18 (go here for tickets).

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse Live in Concert

Last night I got to see Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse while the score was played live by an orchestra and a DJ with a turntable.  It was awesome!  Seeing it on the big screen again reminded me of how much I love this movie and the soundtrack!  A Brooklyn teenager named Miles Morales (Shemeik Moore) is bitten by a radioactive spider and, after waking up with superpowers which disrupt his life, he returns to the alley where he was bitten.  He finds a secret lab with a supercollider created by Kingpin (Liev Schrieber) to access parallel universes in order to bring back alternate versions of his wife and son who died during an altercation with Spider-Man (Chris Pine).  Spider-Man is ultimately killed while trying to destroy the collider but not before several incarnations of Spider-Man from parallel universes appear.  These include a down-and-out Peter B. Parker/ Spider-Man (Jake Johnson), spunky Gwen Stacy/ Spider-Woman (Hailee Steinfeld), the cartoon Peter Porker/ Spider-Ham (John Mulaney), a monochromatic Spider-Noir (Nicolas Cage), and Peni Parker (Kimiko Glenn) a young Japanese girl who pilots a biomechanical spider.  They help Miles discover his powers and find the motivation to fight Kingpin as well as other familiar villains.  The animation in this movie is absolutely dazzling and the music by David Pemberton is just as exciting.  The score was performed by Broadway Sinfonietta, an orchestra composed of women (mostly WOC) conducted by Emily Marshall, and they were a lot of fun to watch because the music features lots of percussion (the percussion section took up half the stage).  I really loved all of the dramatic and exciting themes punctuated by the percussion, especially "Security Guard" as Miles runs away from school after discovering his powers, "Are You Ready to Swing?" as Spider-Man and Miles swing through the trees at Alchemax, and "Miles Morales Returns" when Miles joins the fight against Kingpin, but I also enjoyed the more poignant themes, such as "Destiny" (I loved the trombone) when Spider-Man asks Miles to destroy the collider before he dies, "On Your Way" when Miles learns the truth about the Prowler, "This Spark in You," when Miles' dad talks to him through his door, and "Saying Goodbye" when all of the Spider-People return to their own universes.  Another really cool element of the score is the use of unusual sounds recreated on a turntable, such as the scratching in "Into the Spider-Verse," the howls in "Green Goblin Fight," an elephant trumpeting in "The Prowler," and the clicking of a pen in "Kingpin Clicks," and DJ Damage was on hand to provide these effects (he was also really fun to watch because was so animated).  It is really cool when the songs featured in the soundtrack blend seamlessly into the score, particularly when Miles sings along to "Sunflower" by Post Malone and Swae Lee and when "What's Up Danger" by Blackway and Black Caviar (I love this song so much and I am not alone because the audience applauded for it) fades into "Miles Morales Returns."  I love seeing films in concert but I think this one just might be my favorite because the sights and sounds were so dynamic!  I hope Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse will be next!

The Helsinki Affair

My Book of the Month selection for November was The Helsinki Affair by Anna Pitoniak (the other options were The Last Love Note by Emma Grey, Again and Again by Jonathan Evison, What the River Knows by Isabel Ibanez, This Spells Love by Kate Robb, and Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward). In my late teens and twenties I was obsessed with spy thrillers (my dad used to joke that I would read anything with a hammer and sickle on the cover) so I was really excited for this selection (I was even more excited when I learned that the protagonist is a woman). CIA agent Amanda Cole is languishing in Rome as the deputy station chief when a low ranking officer of the Russian FSB walks in off the street to warn them that a powerful U.S. senator will be assassinated in Cairo the next day. She instinctively believes him but the station chief does not and no action is taken. When the senator is assassinated in the exact manner specified, she is recalled to Washington D.C. and promoted to station chief. As she investigates the motive for the assassination, she uncovers a vast Russian plot that takes her around the globe but she also finds a troubling connection to her father dating back to his time as a CIA operative in Helsinki in the 1980s. Eventually, Amanda must choose between loyalty to her country and loyalty to her father. What I loved most about this novel is that it is very much a contemporary story about stock manipulation using the algorithm to promote so-called "meme stocks" but it is also interspersed with flashbacks to the past involving lots of Cold War intrigue (which reminded me of all the spy thrillers by Ludlum, Le Carre, and Forsyth that I read and loved in my youth) culminating in a dramatic and suspenseful confrontation in Helsinki when the two stories converge. There are agents, double agents, triple agents, moles, red herrings, conspiracies, betrayals, and lots of action involving spycraft so I was completely riveted from beginning to end (and the ending is ambiguous enough to suggest that this might be the beginning of a series which I would welcome) and couldn't put it down. While I loved all of the spycraft, I also really appreciated Amanda as a character because she grapples with being a woman in a man's business, the toll that being an operative takes on one's personal life, and the fear of losing one's humanity (I also loved Kath Frost, a legendary Cold Warrior who helps Amanda navigate all of the above, because it is so refreshing to get a woman's point of view on being a spy). As an avid fan of the genre, I really enjoyed this and would highly recommend it!